May 10, 2010

"The twenty-first century is a time of uncertainty, risk, revolution and explosion"

With the world’s financial markets gyrating wildly and the threat of a true depression looming over the still fragile economic recovery, the faith today that seems under the heaviest assault is more modern: the faith that natural and social science would lead humanity to an era of progress, security and peace.
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while liberal modernity has succeeded as a way of organizing human society for greater productivity and power, it has failed as a religion. The rational, liberal enlightenment has helped us master the forces of nature (though events like the oil spill in the Gulf remind us that we still have much to learn in this respect), but it has not done much to help us master ourselves or to shape our destiny.
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The twenty-first century is a time of uncertainty, risk, revolution and explosion and unfortunately we are heading into it with some assumptions that look less and less likely.
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We like to assume that history is getting calmer, more settled, safer and more predictable. It ain’t. history is going to remain radically risky, radically unknowable, and scarier than anything Stephen King ever wrote.
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Liberal democratic capitalism is not a strategy for making God unnecessary by creating a stable and predictable world. Liberal democratic capitalism is a revolutionary force that brings us face to face with the haunting uncertainties and big questions that since the dawn of time have driven people to God in search of answers.